|
|
|
by James E. Powell
Tick, tick, tick ... busy people tell time by the second, and each one counts when you're working with CD-ROMs. You won't be disappointed with Plextor's 8PleX CD-ROM drive. It offers speed, speed and more speed-without paralyzing your CPU.
The 8PleX is a Fast SCSI, Plug-and-Play device that is SCAM (SCSI configured automagically) compatible. Connect it to a SCAM-compatible SCSI adapter card, and Windows 95 will negotiate the SCSI ID for you.
The drive uses a disc caddy, and has a headphone jack and volume control on the front panel. Power and activity LEDs are also up front, as are control buttons for play and skip, stop and eject.
I tested an external unit with SCSI-2 connectors and attached it to an AdvanSys 940 SCSI controller. Plextor gives the unit a 1.2MB-per-second data-transfer rate and 115ms random-access time. In my tests, the drive achieved a 1.225MBps transfer rate with a 128ms average access time.
I also tested the drive with Stone Utilities' more taxing CD-Tach95 test. That CD-ROM benchmark showed the Plextor's 1.198MBps transfer rate, with a 115 random-access seek time, was a shade under its rated speed. On CPU-usage tests, the 8PleX required only 8 percent of the CPU running at 8X speed.
The 8PleX drive comes with the Plextor Manager 96 utility, which lets you capture CD audio tracks and turn them into .WAV files, view drive and disc information, set the spindown time, and set left and right audio and balance levels.
The Plextor 8PleX offers high-speed access, without burdening your system.
--Info File--
Plextor 8PleX
Price: PX-83CS (internal), $399; PX-85CS (external),
$499
Pros: Speed; low CPU use
Platforms: Windows 95, 3.1x
Plextor
800-4PLEXTOR, 408-980-1838
WinMag Box Score 4.0
|
|
|